


My Lost Melody

by lazarus_girl



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-21
Updated: 2013-10-26
Packaged: 2017-12-30 00:59:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1012140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazarus_girl/pseuds/lazarus_girl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Readying herself to emigrate to Paris and start a new life, Quinn makes contact with her college friend Rachel one last time.</p><p>
  <i>“Rachel Berry is the exception to just about every rule you’ve ever tried to live by.”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Overture

**Author's Note:**

> AU. Future fic. Based in part on _Being Erica_ 1x09 ‘Everything She Wants.’ Title and inspiration from Édith Piaf’s ‘Je N'en Connais Pas La Fin,’ popularly known as ‘My Lost Melody.’ The Jeff Buckley cover is one of my favourites, and is one of many songs referenced throughout the story. Click [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__uu9kNBDS0) to listen to it. This was originally intended to be another GGSM fill, but it ultimately became a lot more personal, and took on a life of its own. Thank you to my ever faithful beta [cargoes](http://cargoes.tumblr.com) for her beta skills cheerleading throughout the writing process.

***

 _“I desired to see you again, to touch you, to know who you were,_  
 _to see whether I should really find you like the ideal image which_  
 _I had retained of you, to shatter my dream, perchance with reality.”_  
– Victor Hugo, _Notre-Dame de Paris_.

***

Paris was once a far away thing, in the abstract, off in the never-never; like wanting to climb a mountain or learn a new language. It would happen, eventually, but with a long journey between the planning and the execution. Paris is no longer a far away thing. It’s a week away, and tonight is the last time you’ll see Rachel before life pulls you both, yet again, in different directions. Even so, you've barely begun to pack, mostly because you’re refusing to even think about what you should take and what will go to storage or Goodwill. Considering sensible things like that means you have to acknowledge that you’re actually going to see this through. You’ve given Christmas gifts early and apologised your way out of invitations to dinner and drinks with other friends, just so you can have a little more time (and more than a little space to breathe) before you head back to Lima for the obligatory visit to your parents for the holidays. They’re behaving like you’re dying instead of emigrating (it’s all a little late for such false sentiment). Two houses. Two Christmases. Twice the hassle. Predestined to fail.

Avoiding people has been surprisingly easy. Once you dangled the idea of making a new life in front of them all, it’s been hard for them to refuse. People always admire ambition. They admire it even more when it involves uprooting yourself to another country. It’s an opportunity, an adventure, and an escape, even if you’re not sure whether you’re running to or running from anymore (a lie).

You’re going through the motions of it; making all the right noises on the phone when your mother calls to ask how it’s all going – fine – but you’re not quite ready to leave yet, and you’re bordering on breaking out with a serious case of buyers remorse (or maybe an early dose of quarterlife crisis, if your sister Frannie is to be believed). Encouraged by Professor Girard, Professor Feldman and your friends, Drew, Lydia and Michelle; you took the leap, thinking yourself strong enough to swap the safety of Yale for Paris-Sorbonne University, ready to face the future and never look back. It felt like a natural progression for your research to immerse yourself further in the history and the culture. You’re meant to have things in order by now, so you can start a new chapter, draw a finite line under things here. In truth, it feels anything but finite, even if the date on your ticket says otherwise.

Rachel understands, like you knew she would, but you can’t help wishing she was a little less eager to see you go – “Paris will be good for you” she’d said in all sincerity.

Through all the schedule juggling, you’ve been conscious of one thing, and one thing only – you’re not just making time for yourself; you’re making time for her too, out of want rather than loyalty or obligation. The hours are precious, and other people might view it as a frivolous waste, but there’s no one you’d rather be with.

Rachel Berry is the exception to just about every rule you’ve ever tried to live by. Rachel Berry is the reason you feel so anchored to this place, this country, even if it hasn’t really felt like home to you for a very long time.

She’s only a few feet away, looking wistfully out of the window at the street below while you fight with the corkscrew and pour what’s meant to be a nightcap glass of wine (red, rich and full-bodied, a favourite), but it feels like miles. It’s been a nice day, different from the many times you imagined it, and better than you could’ve ever hoped for. You collected her from the station in late afternoon, a bundle of nerves and excitement. At first, you didn’t know how to behave, unsure whether to hug her or just to shake hands, because it’s been so long since you’ve been in contact, let alone seen her face-to-face. Two years doesn’t sound much when it’s just a flick of a calendar page, but when it’s the measure of how long you’ve been apart, it’s a lifetime in itself.

The anxiety lasted for all of ten seconds, greeted with a familiar bright smile, a kiss on the cheek, and a hug so warm you felt it in your bones. A huge weight you’d become so accustomed to carrying started to lift the moment she arrived. You easily fell back into step, conversation flowing thick and fast as you wandered through your New Haven haunts – coffee shops, bookstores, little vintage places – arm in arm with Rachel, pointing out all the places you’ve come to love, watching her take it in as you catalogued the changes in each other.

By the time dinner rolled around, it was like you’d never been apart. You were twenty again. For a while, it was easy to forget the years in between, sat in the corner booth of your favourite restaurant – soft lighting; a setting that some might deem romantic – a hello and a goodbye at once. The pervading sense of sadness you’ve felt has only intensified since she walked through the door of your apartment for the first time. You always thought it would be a good thing to have space; it’s why you’ve remained in Connecticut, and Rachel in New York and rarely the twain shall meet. Not a plan, exactly, more a defence mechanism. No, a safeguard. Once, it was for the good of you both, but now it just feels like you’ve needlessly denied yourself contact with her when she would never have the heart to be so withholding herself. Spite, perhaps. Self-preservation, definitely.

It wasn’t always this way. You weren’t always so guarded, so careful, or so painfully aware of what you wanted but couldn’t have. There was always something there, something neither of you really dared to name – a connection, an obvious natural chemistry – right from the second you laid eyes on her. The gift of hindsight lets you call it love. Until her, you thought love at first sight was just something solely found in the confines of the literature you were so enamoured with, something non-existent and not applicable in the real world. You were wrong.

From the moment you stepped into the building on that September morning, struggling with boxes, keys in your mouth, you _knew_ something was going to happen, and that you’d never quite be the same. It was just in the air. At first, you thought it’d be because of the guy who took those boxes from you, no questions asked; kind, handsome in a clean, wholesome sort of way, like Frannie’s boyfriends, offering his hand to you and announcing himself as Sam Evans, newly arrived from Nashville. Then, you thought it might be because of the honest to God beautiful boys he introduced you to a few trips later when you were all settled in, surrounded by your belongings: Kurt Hummel and his British boyfriend Adam Crawford. They were full of energy, welcoming and open, offering to show you around their favourite haunts and planning a welcome party before you could even think of arguing. Though they became some of the greatest friends you’ve ever had, they weren’t the reason why either.

The reason why came in an hour later, when you were still on their beat-up couch, sandwiched between Adam and Kurt, sipping on the best cup of coffee you’d had all day. The moment she came through the door, drenched from the rain and cursing someone called Cassandra July to high heaven, they lit up and their whole focus shifted toward her. So did yours. You couldn’t take your eyes off of her. She was beautiful, but clearly didn’t know it or didn’t believe it. They introduced you to her like you were the greatest thing they’d ever seen. In the flurry of activity that followed, Kurt threw his arm around you and called you gorgeous, but all you can remember is Rachel, studying you as she towelled off her hair, eyes bright and searching, her smile when Sam told her your name was even brighter still, blush creeping into her cheeks as she spoke and gave her own in return: Rachel Berry. Two words was all it took. You were gone. Hook. Line. Sinker. It’s a horrible cliché, but it’s no less true.

It didn’t matter that Rachel was straight, and had a bartender-turned-actor for a boyfriend with drama that could rival Angela Chase and Jordan Catalano (though you know Rachel would rather be of the Burton and Taylor variety), she was giving and affectionate in a way that the girls you were friends with back home in Boston never were. You quickly got the gold seal of approval from Kurt too, the most important person in her life after her dads. Her best and oldest friend adored you off the bat. Everything seemed stacked in your favour somehow, and it became even easier to ignore all those ‘don’t fall in love with her’ thoughts blaring in the back of your mind. The wounds of those early crushes on unattainable girls were dull enough not to hurt anymore thanks to some rather more receptive girls you met once you made it to Columbia.

No one, if you’re honest, before or since has ever hit same benchmark.

Rachel didn’t care you were gay; in her circle of friends, you were the rule rather than the exception. In the spirit of honesty, and because you were well beyond the years of being ashamed and hiding your feelings, you told her the truth: that you were attracted to her; that she was your type; and in any other world, you would’ve asked her out on a date. The world didn’t stop turning, she didn’t freak out, and she was _flattered_. She took it as a huge compliment and it bolstered her confidence. All it gave you was a false sense of security.

Before you knew it, you inseparable. The five of you had always been close – the early months in New York were lost in a blur of nightclubs, house parties, play rehearsals, music recitals, cramming for tests, and writing a neverending stream of papers – but they became so much more to you; an adopted family of sorts, utterly unconventional, and to the outside world, utterly strange and impenetrable. You had other friends – acquaintances really – but nothing comparable to what you shared with them. The front doors of your apartments were always open and you went back and forth like they were somehow connected, never minding when you had to contend with bicycles in the hall or squeezing past Sam running circuits up and down the stairs in lieu of going to the gym.

You learned new habits, confining your smoking to when the others weren’t in your presence – “vocal chords!” they’d shrill, and wave the smoke away – marking out the day you when you didn’t have classes by Rachel’s singing in the morning and Adam’s piano playing in the afternoon; the unofficial soundtrack to your snatched moments of novel writing. You were there for each other, through highs of good grades and hard-won auditions; and the lows, when they’d get passed over for parts, and your Professor rode you twice as hard as everyone else. Fiercely protective of them, because they were that little bit younger and less worldly (aside from Adam), you’d feed them and help with the rent when times were rough with the money you saved from tutoring kids in the summer and helping out in your mother’s gallery. In the middle of it all, was Rachel, drawing you closer and closer, like moth to flame. She had a voracious appetite for almost everything; driven and ambitious in a way you couldn’t find anything but alluring. She was so eager to see more of the world to soak it all up and you wanted to be the one to guide her.

Perhaps it would’ve been easier if someone had said something: if Sam had stood in your way and played the possessive boyfriend; Kurt the overprotective best friend; Adam the wise counsel, ready to flag up all the mistakes you were readily making. They didn’t, they actively encouraged you to spend time with her. More often than not, she would seek you out with coffee and pastries to help you through an all-nighter or just needing female company after a particularly hard day under the rule of Cassandra July. You never had the heart to turn her away, even if you knew that the closeness you shared was too close, and the ties that bound you together were too tight and beginning to choke you both.

The wine you’re pouring overspills, dripping on to your hand, snapping you back to reality. “Shit” you breathe, reaching for a cloth to clean the mess left behind. They’re unequal now, more in Rachel’s glass than your own, and you’re suddenly aware of how bad it looks, so you reach for the bottle and even them up, taking a long sip of your own for Dutch courage. It’s been a day of going back and forward. Of remembering and re-remembering sometimes as you’ve swapped stories and anecdotes. It’s a relief the history you carry with Rachel seems to be shared.

Then, you stall. The playlist you setup on your iPod is standard fare, nothing too loud or intrusive that might distract or otherwise derail the conversation, and you may or may not have checked it three times over for nothing that came from Rachel’s ‘Golden Voices’ list – Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald, Etta James, Billie Holliday, Édith Piaf, Whitney, Mariah, Celine, or her beloved Barbra. As it turns out, there aren’t any, but still; you leave the glasses, stepping away from the counter and turn to face each other at exactly the same time.

Joni. Joni Mitchell. Blue.

You want to throw yourself across the room and leap on the iPod to skip it, but you can’t move and neither can Rachel.

“It’s been a long time since I heard Joni,” she says, softly, head titling in appreciation as Joni’s voice fills the apartment.

You smile at her, and just stand there, listening. You’re not in Connecticut anymore. You’re in a shoebox in Greenpoint, shivering against December chill with no heating. Wearing berets and scarves were a necessity, not a fashion statement.

The look in Rachel’s eyes is more sad than happy. She’s back there too.

“I missed her,” she comments, sadder still. Her eyes are brimming with tears. She swallows, steeling herself, and you look away, because it’s too much now, she knows you too well.

What Rachel really means is that she missed you. It’s only now that you realise you missed her too.

You go back to the kitchen, the glasses and the wine, taking another sip that’s more like a gulp, craving a cigarette for the first time in a long time – wishing there were a door to close behind you, so there was more space, some barrier to protect you from the intensity of Rachel’s gaze, but all you can do is turn your back on her. You realise, far too belatedly for your own good, that this whole thing was probably a very bad idea. It was nice, in your head, stuck firmly in the abstract where you could forgive and forget without uncomfortable things like truth getting in the way. The past is the past; it’s meant to stay there. You were foolish to think otherwise. It can’t be stitched together to make something new, no matter how hard you try to make the pieces fit differently.

Joni tugs at your heart in a different way than Rachel’s sadness. Joni lets you remember the good in that year that so often gets lost, tainted by the aftermath of what came after. Joni makes you think of long nights stretching over into the next day as you smoked and read, while Rachel and the others puzzled over theory, choreography, or ran lines for an upcoming audition; the five of you fuelled by cheap liquor, cold pizza, and later, coffee. Joni makes you think of the quietest part of those nights, when Sam, Kurt and Adam would drift back to their own beds and leave you and Rachel behind. You’d end up huddled together on the couch, Streisand, Hepburn or Bardot unwatched on the TV. Joni let you feel Rachel playing idly with your hair while you read aloud in French and she attempted to repeat it back to you, laughing whenever she got it wrong. Joni let you see Rachel in ways you never thought you would: those deep brown eyes, of hers drinking you in, dismantling you, piece by piece; those lips, tempting you, growing more kissable the longer you watched them. Joni is a blessing and a curse.

You were so close to being something more. Sometimes it felt like all that separated you from a full-blown love affair was a glance, a step, a breath, a word. You danced on the edge of it, and the balance was always delicate. You worked hard to make sure it never tipped.

On the day it did, you had no idea how bad the fallout would be.

You weren’t big on celebrating New Year’s. Enforced mass celebration isn’t really you, and the pretence of the calendar flipping over from one year to the next meaning somehow that mistakes are magically erased is even more ridiculous (but how you wish it were true). If you had your way, you would’ve spent it at home, and drunk your own wine instead of being ripped off by bartenders for their shitty overpriced cocktails, packed into some bar like a sardine in the name of celebration, but you didn’t get your way. Kurt and Rachel ganged up on you, and you couldn’t refuse. Kurt’s line of attack was, on reflection, downright underhanded. Rachel and Sam were going through a particularly bad patch – the kind of bad patch that involved a lot of screaming and ended up with Rachel sleeping on your couch, puffy-eyed, clutching tissues and you for comfort – and Rachel needed cheering up. It wasn’t fair for her to be the third wheel since Sam had opted to work and bank the exorbitant tips. You were halfway to saying yes when Rachel herself worked her magic and persuaded you with a pout and several rounds of lash batting that seeing in 2014 “wouldn’t be the same without you.”

They even persuaded you into letting them make you over; Adam standing in as the objective third party at your request so they didn’t go too overboard. Once they were finished, you didn’t really recognise yourself, dolled up in a short skirt and heels for the first time since you left your horrendous teen years behind. You did recognise that Rachel was looking at you longer than necessary in the mirror while Kurt curled your hair and muttered something about being in the presence of “the ghost of Grace Kelly,” in the same awed tone your mother used when you went through the charade of attending your senior prom with the school’s heartthrob, Blaine Anderson, not wanting to break with tradition or admit that you’d much rather have gone with the captain of the cheerleading squad, Santana Lopez, instead.

You thought of Santana when you were in some strange club, significantly drunker than you intended to be, pressed close to Rachel, somehow cajoled into dancing with her, Kurt, and Adam. All the while, you knew it was dangerous; to let your guard drop like that, but you could only resist them for so long. First, you were deafened by pop music, and later, by the sound of the people around you counting in the New Year, waiting for the ball to drop. As the confetti fluttered down on you all like snow and fireworks lit up the sky outside, you couldn’t take your eyes off Rachel. One moment she was saying “Happy New Year,” and the next, her hands framed your face and her mouth was on yours.

She was kissing you. Rachel. Was. Kissing. You.

Just silly tradition you thought, brain running far too slow to process it, frozen to the spot and trying not to react and do what you’d wanted from that first September day. Just excitement, you kept repeating to yourself as Rachel didn’t pull away, but instead, pulled you closer, deepening the kiss, well beyond a celebratory peck, and you relaxed, giving in at last, crossing the line you blurred months ago. Just a mistake, you knew, as she pulled away, wide-eyed, stumbling away from you as if burned. Clarity and sobriety descended in the blink of an eye, and you fought your way through the crowd, calling her name, desperate to try and catch hold of her and tell her everything was OK, but she disappeared amongst the mass of bodies before you could think of trying.

When you made it outside, she was nowhere to be seen. The first ten minutes of the New Year were spent leaving frantic voicemails as your chest grew tighter and started to panic when she didn’t answer her phone. The next twenty were spent throwing up in the alley behind the club when you couldn’t get hold of Kurt or Adam either, and nausea surged up out of nowhere. Maybe it was shock. Maybe it was relief. Maybe it was plain despair with no other outlet. The hour after that was spent walking home because every cab in New York had disappeared into thin air, just like Rachel. Jostled by drunken revellers on the sidewalk, you ended up going most of the way barefoot and in tears – months of frustration and fear spilling out of you – after the heel on one of your shoes broke off.

The apartment building was quiet and cold, even once you made it inside. For the first time ever, Rachel’s door was closed. You waited outside, hand hovering in a fist, ready to knock, straining to hear if anyone was inside. They were. You stood silent, listening to the unmistakable sound of Rachel and Sam having sex. By now, Rachel’s soft staccato breaths were achingly familiar, and you could picture her clearly in your mind from the times you’d walked in on them accidentally, before, after, and sometimes during. Your memory was faultless, even in that dishevelled state and you loathed the fact; able to recall every tiny, beautiful, perfect detail: the flush in her cheeks, the swell of her breasts, the curve of her ass, the arch of her back. You slid down the wall; still listening until it was silent, compelled to stay and endure despite the pain it caused. Penance for letting yourself slip. Penance for greed. The universe was teaching you a lesson.

After a while – it could’ve been two minutes or two hours, you’re not sure – there were footsteps on the stairs, jolting you from your stupor. The only thing you could see in front you was Adam’s shoes. Then his face, etched with concern, talking to you and wiping away the tears you couldn’t stop shedding with his thumbs, but you couldn’t hear a word, even when he cradled your face and forced you to look at him. Eventually, he picked you up and carried you into your apartment while you cried. Without question, without judgement, he undressed you and put you to bed, staying next to you, stroking your hair, holding you tight until you had nothing left to cry with. The apartment was already flooded with the light of another day before you succumbed to sleep.

The last thing you remember with any kind of clarity was his voice, soft and consoling as he spoke, “Oh Quinn, you silly, silly girl. I told you not to fall in love with her.”

Things were never the same after that.

There are a lot of things you would change, if you could. Things that hurt in a way that have no wound, even if they come with a scar. Rachel, though naturally expressive and dramatic, was terrible when that expression involved her feelings. You should’ve bridged the gap to help her. You were the wise one in it all. The traveller, the reader, the independent spirit, and she was just a fish out of water desperately wanting for more, stuck in the confines of her small-town upbringing. It wasn’t the kiss that killed you both, severing your connection absolute; it was the silence that followed. You just didn’t know where to start. Words had never been difficult for you, but anytime Rachel was near, they deserted you. The silence was resignation on your part, an understanding that a line you should never have crossed had been trampled all over in an instant. People mistook it for guilt at best and indifference at worst. Neither of these painted you in a good light.

You wanted to be that cold, unfeeling girl, it would’ve been easier in the long run, and much less harmful to you both, but you couldn’t not care about her. You wanted all those cross words you had with Kurt when he tried to dig out why things had changed so completely between you and Rachel. The anger meant something. If you were angry with Kurt, you weren’t angry with yourself. It gave you somewhere to focus energy. No answer was good enough for him, and he wouldn’t let it go. He made it clear he thought you were the bad guy. It made you thankful for Sam’s complete obliviousness to the turn things had taken. He treated you the same as he always had, and part of you was strangely grateful, even if you couldn’t answer whenever he’d ask why you and Rachel didn’t hang out so much anymore. He always spoke as if you were just two friends who had fallen out, some argument or other spilling over into a silly grudge. If only. The truth of it was ugly, and selfish.

You couldn’t stand to watch her struggle without your support. You couldn’t stand the scrutiny in Kurt’s eyes, the knowingness in Adam’s or the vague threat you sometimes saw in Sam’s, convinced that they knew because it felt like the whole sorry mess was written all over your face. It was just awkward, beyond awkward, because the comfort was gone. Sides were picked, respective corners retreated to; Adam left in the middle trying his best to be a friend to you and Rachel without also betraying Kurt. He was fighting a losing battle, and so were you.

Deceit is something of an art, but even you couldn’t quite swallow what you told them all time after time to go along with Rachel’s continued denial. Even in the worst of it, when you felt utterly cornered and betrayed, you couldn’t go against her. The knife was twisted deep enough already.

The reset button on your life had to be pushed. You had to move past it. By day, you threw yourself into your work, putting yourself forward to be Professor Adams’ TA just to fill up your hours and endear yourself to the faculty and stop questions about your backsliding attendance and grades. By night, you stayed out drinking at bars where no one else knew you in a half-hearted attempt to expand your social circle. There were other girls who caught your eye, and some who you just liked to flirt with for the fun of it that helped to consume some of that Rachel-shaped void you were left with. Every one of them was a brown-eyed brunette. In the end, they looked less and less like Rachel, but it didn’t much matter. You were wanted, and it was enough. That’s what you told yourself to justify the ill-advised fling with Tori Lloyd, a girl from your Renaissance Literature class, just because you knew she’d had a crush on you since freshman orientation. She was just about Rachel’s polar opposite in every respect (the look on Rachel’s face whenever she saw you both together was something like victory, but it rang hollow each and every time).

The less time you spent in that building, the better.

For a while, it worked well enough. You were learning to get over it. The hurt when you saw Rachel and Sam together was less, and Tori certainly soothed the wound. You’re not proud of how you treated her, but at least the split was amicable this time, you just drifted apart. She always knew your heart wasn’t in it. Your heart wasn’t in New York anymore either. You felt utterly disconnected, from everyone and everything, and you could feel it all slipping from your grasp.

Just when you needed someone the most, they arrived, and it was the last person you expected. One night, Kurt showed up at your door, full of remorse for his actions, tripping over himself to apologise for how he’d treated you. Adam had told him the truth. It didn’t feel like the truth anymore, even if you all knew it was. You talked and talked, and tears were shed, and he was determined to at least get you and Rachel on speaking terms again. It cut you to the quick to know that she’d been suffering too. Lonely, that was the word Kurt used, over and over, that Rachel was “lonely without you,” and somehow that felt worse to you than the idea of her feeling alone.

By the end of January, the doubts you’d had about staying in New York became more than nagging. You accompanied Professor Adams to a conference at Yale, little more than her errand girl, but finally, you could breathe. When the speakers talked, you felt that spark about your classes and writing again that had long since been lost. The transfer window was well and truly closed, but she pulled some strings and called in a favour with the Dean of Admissions and wrote you a glowing reference to back up your transcript. Once you made the decision to go, things seemed to change gear, and you could see light at the end of the tunnel. Rachel had begun to say more than three words to you, offering a smile each morning and a coffee sometimes when you’d run into each other downtown. You weren’t friends exactly, but you could deal with being around her. Progress. Baby steps, but it was a fragile accord, and there wasn’t time enough for you both to repair. You needed miles between you for that, and she knew it too.

A week or so later, you stood on the platform, sandwiched between Kurt and Adam as they both hugged you goodbye, saying how much they’d miss you and how they wished things were different. It was harder than you thought to let go and write off over sixteen months of your life as a ‘learning experience’ but that’s how you described it to the faculty at Yale, and the epithet stuck – an easier version of the story to tell. There were tears, of course, and promises to keep in touch – even if you all knew that might not happen. Rachel had intended to come, but an audition for _The Glass Menagerie_ came up, and you wouldn’t hear of it that she’d miss it on your account. There’s no real way you could’ve said goodbye to her anyway. There were too many things left to say. Sorry was never enough.

As the train left the station, and you watched Kurt and Adam get smaller and smaller, you knew you were making the right choice. For yourself. For Rachel. For everyone.


	2. Reprise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“This was meant to be about letting go, not being dragged down by every ounce of your baggage.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For story notes see [Chapter One](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1012140/chapters/2009304). Thank you to my ever faithful beta [cargoes](http://cargoes.tumblr.com) for her beta skills and cheerleading.

You stand there for a moment holding the two wine glasses, now respectably full; recovered enough to face Rachel again now the ghost of Joni has drifted away replaced by Norah Jones’ ‘Nightingale.’ It’s just music and the two of you together (but alone) again. Taking a steadying breath, you think about talking; asking some banal question, just to break the tension and get back on an even keel. You don’t want to be back in this prickly awkward place with her. This was meant to be about letting go, not being dragged down by every ounce of your baggage.

There’s no talking. 

Instead, you just watch her as she moves around your apartment because there’s no one here to tell you that you can’t. Even the voice in your head that tells you to remember the boundaries you set for yourself years ago is quieter than you’ve ever heard. She looks beautiful in this light; dimmed but warm for the mood. It wouldn’t feel out of place to tell her. Everything feels comfortable and familiar, like she’s meant to be here. You like that her heels are cast aside on the floor by the couch, while her coat is draped over one arm of it, like it always was back in New York. The first thing she’d do while telling you about her day was kick off her shoes and shrug her way out of her jacket. The fact she’s happy enough to do it tonight means something. Something good.

You look at her again as you cross the room, really look, at her figure-hugging dress; the heels; the smoky-eyed make-up; the pastel pink lipstick; the soft waves in her hair; perfect French manicure trying to match it up with the girl you remember, forever hiding behind her fringe. She’s still there. Somewhere. For all that’s the same about her, she seems so different to that sweet, still giddy Midwestern girl who greeted you the day you moved in. She’s grown into herself somehow; confident in her skin and her body in a way she never really was when you were younger. She was always an outrageous flirt, mischievous, when she was drunk enough, but now it seems like she knows the power she has over people; she’s learned that she can be desired. That people can want her as much as she wanted – no, pined; it was always that kind of back and forth game with her and Sam – them in return. 

You hold out the glass for her to take, offering it with a graceful flourish. “It’s vegan. I made sure,” you offer, feeling strangely shy. 

As she reaches for the glass, her fingertips brush against yours briefly before curling around the stem. It’s a tiny moment, but still, your breath hitches, and whatever you were going to say is lost. You almost forget to let go of the glass because you’re so focused on Rachel’s face, wondering if she feels the same as you.

She gives a soft, “Thanks” in return, looking anywhere but at you, cheeks flushing.

“I got it a while ago, from that place you like,” you continue, stepping back from her instinctively.

Running a nervous hand through your hair, you grip your own glass tighter. It needs a refill already and you cross to the kitchen quickly to get the bottle, assuming Rachel too will want more. Really, it’s just to have something to occupy your hands with and look busy. Your mother would be appalled at your hosting skills. She taught you better than this. To think, you were once a debutante with a steady nice-as-pie boyfriend. Not the greatest period of your life, but Blaine is still one of your favourite people in the world. He’s one of few outside your New York circle who knows the full story about Rachel. If it weren’t for him, you wouldn’t have made contact with her at all.

Rachel smiles, sipping on her drink thoughtfully when you come back to her. “The Natural Wine Company? Oh, that’s so sweet. You didn’t have to.”

“I was feeling nostalgic,” you shrug, putting the bottle down on the coffee table. “Anyway, they do online ordering now.”

You flinch. As soon as you realise what you’ve said, you want to take it back. Her head snaps up, and she looks you right in the eyes. There’s a flicker of something like sadness there, because she’s obviously realised that you might’ve been in Brooklyn and didn’t visit her, and then, that you couldn’t bring yourself to do it at all. Kurt and Adam, plus Justine, Mark, and Tori from your Columbia days – have asked you hundreds of times, but you can never bring yourself to do it. There are too many ghosts. 

“The wonders of technology,” she says, just to fill the space, and lets out an empty laugh as she turns away.

The awkwardness is back. You sigh heavily, watching Rachel visibly tense up. She pads carefully around your apartment, busying herself, and you’re wondering why she’s persevering with this (mostly you’re wondering why _you_ are). She’s regarding everything with the same curious eyes she’s always had, taking in the photographs and books that still line the walls, fingertips trailing over the spines as she goes. Then, she slows to a stop and picks something out that’s caught her interest.

Rachel turns back to you, smiling fondly despite herself. “You kept this?”

In her hand is a playbill for a student production of _Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark_. It was the first legitimate thing you saw her in. Everyone else was there for the guy playing Peter Parker-slash-Spider-Man; Cameron Tate, NYADA’s very own Link Larkin, who Kurt had a not-so-secret crush on. You only had eyes for Mary Jane. He’s Broadway’s darling now, but you don’t think he’s as talented as Rachel, Kurt or Adam.

“Of course! It was your first show!” you look at her, puzzled, because she knows how sentimental you can be, and she likes keepsakes too. 

Even after all you went through, doing anything else would be ridiculous. You aren’t that vindictive. You thought about setting light to every little thing that reminded you of her, but that would’ve meant setting fire your apartment and leaving it naked, because everything, and you mean everything, had a connection. The books you leant her that you’d dissect together for hours; the clothes she borrowed that always carried the lingering scent of her perfume long after your took them to the Laundromat; the playlists she made on your laptop or the emails you still can’t bring yourself to delete.

She turns to sit on the couch, cautiously near the edge, while she flips through the pages of the playbill, shaking her head, smirking at the pictures she finds. “It was fucking terrible!” she exclaims, with a short laugh. It still amuses you to hear her curse, because she’s usually so painfully polite. “Who thought a musical about Spiderman was a great idea?” she asks, looking over at you through her lashes with a knowing smile. 

“Julie Taymor,” you deadpan, unable to resist. 

Rachel rolls her eyes, setting her glass down on the table. “Funny.”

“In your defence, you were a great Mary Jane,” you add, with a genuine smile, because it’s true. She was the best thing about it.

You take a chance now things don’t feel so tense and sit with her on couch, crossing your legs to mirror Rachel’s position, leaving a respectable distance between you both. 

“I think you might be biased,” she says, uncharacteristically modest, as she rests the playbill across her lap, regarding a picture of her younger self with Cameron smack in the middle of the playbill. “It was cursed on Broadway and our production was no better. Re-staging it in a shoebox space on the tiniest budget known to man was an even worse idea!”

You rest back, chuckling a little, happy to let her talk. Truth be told, you’ve missed how passionate and absorbed she gets about theatre. Most people seemed to find it annoying because she talked a mile a minute and never let people get a word in edgeways, but you always loved it; because she’s eloquent and honest and almost always right.

“Oh God! I made you stand there while I signed it!” she exclaims, dramatically, hand to her mouth.

You lean forward, and true enough, there’s her autograph, right next to her headshot, it had fresh-faced ingénue written all over it. You remember the day the proofs came in the mail from her agent, reducing all of you to shrieking idiots, jumping up and down and squeezing the life out of her because she’d ‘made it.’ 

“Because of the money it would fetch once you were famous!” you both say, at exactly the same time, bursting into laughter at the memory. 

“God, I must’ve been insufferable!” she says, shaking her head, and it sets you both off again.

“You were you!”

Now you’ve started laughing, neither of you seem to stop. Rachel takes your wine away to keep you from spilling it or choking on it, and you have to force yourself to swallow so you don’t. In the middle of it all, you realise how much you’ve missed hearing her laughter. It’s utterly contagious, especially when she lets go like this, and she looks so incredibly beautiful. Rachel falls back against you, her head resting on your shoulder, knees brushing against each other; fitting in the same space she always did. Suddenly, everything feels different. The room is smaller and the air heavier, all because she’s closer than she’s been in years. Neither of you are laughing anymore.

“Do you still believe that?” she asks, not lifting her head; solemn and earnest. 

She turns the bracelet on your right wrist delicately, transfixed by it. You watch her, equally fascinated, but thrown by the intimacy; uncertain and certain of where this is all going at once. It would be easy to kiss her now; you wouldn’t even have to move very much. This time, you don’t think Rachel would run away. You think her staying would be worse. It’s more dangerous.

“What? That you’ll be famous? Like Patty Lupone or Bernadette Peters?"

She lifts her head, amused by your namedropping. “Quinn, I’ll never be that famous. I’d like to give Megan Hilty or Laura Benanti a run for their money someday though.”

“Well, I think you could. All it takes is the right part,” you assure her, wishing you could use more than words, but you don’t trust yourself. “You know, they were nuts not to hire you for _The Glass Menagerie_ or _Hello Dolly_.”

Rachel’s head snaps up, surprise in her voice evident. “How do you know about that?”

She’s got you there. 

“Oh,” you shrug, trying for nonchalant. “People talk.”

As you knew she would, she joins the dots quickly.

“I’ll kill Kurt! He’s been in contact with you all this time and he didn’t tell me?” she shakes her head, and a rare flash of anger crosses her features. “He encouraged me to write back to you, said that I’d regret it otherwise. ‘Now I’m not so sure.”

You look away, unsure what to say, because Kurt just took it upon himself to email from time to time, just to check in on you and tell you how he’s doing. It’s one of your unwritten laws. The second law is you don’t talk about it, not that you’ve had the opportunity to see him in the flesh for years. The third law is that Rachel never finds out. It’s something of a shock to realise he kept his word all this time. They started as a way to keep you in the loop about the theatre company he was trying to get off the ground with Adam and then his Broadway vlog on YouTube. It’s not your fault that he started adding paragraphs about Rachel, and they got longer and longer when you felt brave enough to ask questions, and he was kind enough to take pity on you; somehow able to answer without judgement. 

“Rachel,” you begin, putting your hand over hers to calm her. “He was just doing what I asked him to. He thought a clean break was best,” you swallow, studying her carefully, watching her shoulders sag as the tension in her body dissipates. “I thought it was.”

“What changed? Why was it OK for you to know about me, but I just had to conjure up things in my mind?” she purses her lips closed to stop herself from saying anything more, but it doesn’t work. “I think I liked it better when imagination was all I had,” she sighs heavily, reaching for her glass and taking a long sip.

She’s still angry, and you can’t really blame her this time, but it’s laced with a sadness you didn’t expect to hear. This is a betrayal to her; that’s clear, but you really meant no harm. Even so, you feel a strange sense of guilt, because suddenly, you realise how unfair it was to have that extra knowledge, that safety, when she didn’t. Until you made contact with her yourself a few weeks ago – a cautious email sent in the dead of night extending the olive branch of your invitation; terrified she would answer and terrified that she wouldn’t – Kurt was all you had to remind you that Rachel actually existed, and it wasn’t some elaborate fantasy you made up in your head. 

Seeing his name pop up in your inbox every so often was a comfort, and you came to rely on them more than you ever thought possible. You were cheating yourself, you know it, salving a gaping wound and then, eventually, picking at the scab of it much later, but you couldn’t find it in you to tell him to stop writing. You wanted a little piece of her that would never fade away. 

“Because,” you start, drawing level with her, closing the distance between you that’s opened up without you noticing. “You were much harder to let go of than I thought.”

She turns to look at you, the faintest trace of tears in her eyes, like you’ve just said something she never thought she’d hear but always hoped to. “Quinn, I …”

“It’s OK,” you cut in, gently, saving Rachel from tying herself up in knots. “Don’t dwell on it. What’s done is done.”

She opens her mouth to speak, but then thinks better of it. You wonder if you look as pained as she does. Puffing out a breath, you reach for the wine, and tilt the bottle toward her, offering more. To your surprise, she nods, mouth curving into a small smile, moving her glass closer. All the things you’ve been desperately trying to avoid are coming slowly to the surface. You have a feeling you’ll need much more than wine to help you both once they break through.

No one talks for a while. It’s an easy kind of silence, strangely comforting despite everything. You can never find that solace with someone else. All you’re aware of is the level in the wine bottle on the table getting lower and lower as you both take turns to pour, song after song playing on unattended, time tick-tick-ticking forward, unhurried, like years are passing instead of minutes, and the day you have to leave for good will never come if you just lock all the doors and windows and stay just like this, hunkered down against the storm of the real world. The second bottle of wine was opened a while ago, more easily than the first, and it’s already half gone. You don’t think you’re drunk and neither is Rachel, you know your limits, it seems, and it takes longer to hit it now drinking over dinner is a thing. Rachel doesn’t look at you aside from when you offer the bottle, but you know she’s listening to the lyrics of the songs you chose to play, because everything has meaning to her. Everything has meaning to you. 

It feels like she’s on the edge of admitting something or maybe you are; a thousand or so things still stuck firm on the tip of your tongue.

Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rhiannon’ is an even bigger mistake than Joni was, if you’re being honest, but you’re a sucker for Stevie Nicks, and it didn’t register on a lyrical level until Rachel cleared her throat, trying not to look as uncomfortable as she obviously was. It wasn’t purposeful, you used to listen to Joni, Judy Collins, Kate Bush and Norah Jones all the time, and you loved watching the reactions Rachel had to them all because they’re so different to what she used to listen to; they speak to a melancholy she doesn’t possess, or at least, she didn’t show it. Tonight, everything feels loaded and heavy, mounting up in a way you can’t control. They aren’t just songs, they were never just songs, even to Rachel. They were the parts of you neither dared to speak about. Maybe there always will be. After all, it’s dangerous to give everything away. On the day that person hurts you, you’re left with nothing. That fear makes you clam up when you should do the exact opposite. There are questions you want to know the answers to – a lot of them – so you can make peace with everything, but you’re scared of what those answers will be.

“You missed your train,” you hear yourself say, glancing toward the clock on the opposite wall.

“I know,” Rachel replies, quietly, sounding much more relaxed than before.

You a risk glance in her direction studying her profile as she sips delicately on her wine, trying to read her. The last train was over an hour ago. She made no moves to leave. You don’t know whether to be excited or terrified.

Turning to her slightly, you ask the inevitable. “This couch isn’t great, but it’s yours if you want it? If you want to stay, I mean,” you’re rambling and you hate yourself for suddenly turning into an inarticulate mess. After all, _you’re_ meant to be the worldly one. 

You’d like to blame it on the wine, but you can’t. She holds up a hand and you’re grateful, she nods in that same soft way that usually makes your heart pick up. Sure enough, it still does. “Are you tired? It’s been a long day,” you add, hurriedly, suddenly concerned that she might just be staying to keep you company out of politeness.

She looks you straight in the eye for the first time in a while. “No, not at all,” she sounds surprised, and smiles wider at it. “I’ve missed just being with you like this. All the hours …” she tails off, gesturing vaguely with her free hand. “I don’t think I want it to end yet,” she declares, like you’re showing her somewhere new and magical. Maybe that’s true.

“Me either,” you breathe, daring to move closer to her. “Cinderella hasn’t turned into a pumpkin either, so I think we’re fine,” you continue, a little louder. It’s a poor attempt to lighten the mood, but she still seems amused.

“I think,” she pauses, brows furrowing briefly before she continues, “we are,” she nods. “We are,” she repeats assuring herself and you at once. 

You aren’t sure what to say, because she’s not talking about Cinderella anymore. The way her eyes stay trained on your face is making it harder to breathe. You grip the stem of your glass even tighter than before.

Another song starts to play on your iPod, and your heart seizes in your chest even harder than it did for Joni. This time, it’s Jeff Buckley. You slipped up. Again. All the energy you wasted on being careful made you careless. Though Rachel gained an appreciation for him just because of you, the song you meant to add isn’t there; it’s his take on an Édith Piaf classic instead. The only one that Rachel’s ever dared to say she liked just as much as Édith herself. You want the floor to open up and swallow you whole.

“Jeff,” Rachel’s lips curve into a half smile like she’s recalling an old friend. “Come on,” she begins, putting her own glass down and taking your own away and setting them both on the table.

“What are you doing?” you throw her a confused look.

“Let’s dance,” she beams, and in an instant, the mood shifts from an awkward reunion-not-date to an even more awkward prom date throwback. “Like we used to,” she says, buoyed by a brightness you haven’t seen since she arrived.

Before you can even think of arguing, she rises to her feet, shifting back the coffee table to give you both more room and holding out her hand. “It was so much fun.”

“Rachel, I – I don’t dance,” you protest, shaking your head. You want to say ‘not anymore,’ but you stop yourself just in time, and thankfully, “I’m nowhere near drunk enough for that,” comes out instead.

“Please?” she asks, tiling her head, eyes sad. “For old time’s sake?” 

The way she says it sounds a lot like ‘Just one last time’ instead. It hits you all at once. You’re going to have to let her go. Your stomach lurches painfully at the thought. Sooner rather than later, there will be more than a train ride separating you. How can you refuse? 

You know what she wants. The image is burned harder in your memory than any other, because it’s a time you still associate with being genuinely happy: the two of you, just the right side of wasted, holding hands and spinning around your apartment blasting out from the speakers as you shifted to clumsy half-hearted waltzing. Her favourite part was singing along in purposefully atrociously-accented French when it got to the chorus hook with all the fervour of someone singing La Marseillaise on Bastille Day. Once it was over, you’d collapse in a fit of giggles on the couch. 

What’s one more dance between old friends?

“Fine!” you sigh, relenting, because she’s about two seconds from puppy dog eyes, and you’re defenceless in the face of that. “Don’t blame me if I step on your feet, you’re the one with natural rhythm!”

“Well, at least you aren’t wearing heels!” she declares, hand hovering near the iPod to restart the track.

You let out a chuckle and she pulls you up. “No spins though, I don’t want you to throw up everywhere.”

“That was one time!” she gapes. “Not to be repeated!”

“Oh Rachel Berry!” you give an exaggerated sigh, extending your hand to her, giving yourself over and playing along. “I missed your drama.”

“Theatricality,” she corrects, softly. 

Her fingers lace loosely with yours, and you pull her closer; arm threading around her waist, hand just resting in the small of her back. Even though it’s not remotely smooth, and it needs more fine motor-skills than you currently possess, it’s surprising how easily the steps come back to you. She giggles just like always as you turn in time to Jeff’s guitar, going faster and faster like a spinning top and you just let yourselves be silly for a while. 

When the lyrics really start to bite, and it sounds like Jeff is just singing to you alone, neither of you are really doing more than swaying together in time to the music. Her head rests on your shoulder, and you let your eyes close, lulled by her voice as she sings along. You’d forgotten just how clear, full, and beautiful it sounds. She’s so close you can feel every note.

Out of habit, you find yourself reciting the French of the chorus hook, and Rachel lets out a shuddering breath, pulling you closer still, so your bodies are flush. 

_“Oh mon amour... A toi toujours.”_

For all your honesty, these words are the closest you ever got to telling her how you really felt back then. It wasn’t the greatest camouflage, because even her passable high school French could figure out the meaning. It was a thin veneer of protection, but she let you have it, seemingly content to deceive herself too. 

_“Dans tes grands yeux... Rien que nous deux.”_

“I broke up with Sam,” she announces, out of nowhere, and it takes all your will not to pull away from her. Rachel doesn’t move either.

You swallow, thrown by her admission, not because it surprises you in any way, because they were always so tempestuous, but because you know there’s no right response.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” you reply, and you mean it, because she was crazy about him. When they were good they were _really_ good, but they were bad, they were _really_ bad.

“No you’re not,” she chuckles, but it’s empty. “You liked him, but you didn’t like our drama, and there was a lot of that.”

“What happened?” you risk, knowing you’re prying, but fearful of her answer.

“We just drifted apart,” she sighs, heavy and sad, like she’s not telling the full story. Maybe she’s sparing you or maybe she’s sparing herself, you’re not sure. “He’s in LA now and on every teenage girls wall because of that TV show he’s in. It’s weird. We don’t really talk much at all these days.”

You have a vague recollection of seeing the very thing she’s talking about when you were channel surfing one night, taking a break from reading. It took you a long time to make the connection, because of his short hair and clean-shaven face that made him look like just another cute, clean-cut non-threatening heartthrob type. When the character spoke, and you heard the slight remnants of a drawl, it finally clicked, and you sat there strangely transfixed until the commercial break.

“It wasn’t my place to say anything,” Rachel stiffens slightly in your arms and you hate it. “He made you happy. I wanted you to be happy,” you continue, sincere, hoping she knows you really do mean it.

“I wasn’t always. Why do you think I came to you? Friends are supposed to support each other, even if they make questionable romantic decisions!” 

You’ve never heard her speak this candidly before, laughing to herself in that same hollow way, and you’re wondering how bad it got for her to finally make the break. The pretence of this last dance just got a little more ridiculous, but you carry on, turning her like you’re supposed to because she always let you lead. The kind of questionable decisions she’s talking about were ones that left her in tears, while you picked up the pieces.

“Were we?” the question slips out before you realise it.

Her head lifts slightly. “What?”

“Just friends?” 

It’s meant as an innocent question, but you can’t hide how accusatory it sounds. Friend is so small a word to begin with. It makes everything you shared seem so basic, so ordinary, and so completely different to how it actually felt at the time. 

“I think we were always more than that,” she admits, quietly, and you can barely hear her over the song. “I think I was young, stupid, and afraid of what being more meant,” her voice wavers, and you can tell she’s trying not to cry.

You fix your gaze on the bookshelf behind her, not daring to look her in the eye.

“Rachel,” you say, gently, resisting the urge to stroke her hair and comfort her like you always used to when she was upset, “don’t say things like that. I knew what I was getting into. I always knew what the boundaries were. You’re straight. You were with Sam. You guys had history. That was it.”

It sounds so simple, so clear, and so rational when you put it like that, but it wasn’t. It was complicated and messy and difficult and you don’t know how you’re managing to stay so calm.

She moves back a little, and suddenly her eyes are on you, following you through the steps, faster and rougher and you don’t really know why.

“And then I went and moved them. I kissed _you_ , Quinn. Remember? You were always honest with how you felt about me from the start. You never pushed me into anything. It was all me. I never should’ve left that club. I shut down. I cut you off. My behaviour was disgusting –”

Desperate to make it all stop, you cut across her, “Perfectly valid,” you pause, needing to gather yourself. 

Of course you remember. It’s one of the things you’d rather forget.

“It was just a kiss. A heat of the moment New Year’s kiss. It happens. God Rachel, you were eighteen fucking years old!” you’re half shouting and you don’t even know why. Your voice gives out, and you can feel the beginning of tears stinging the back of your eyes.

There was a reason you never talked about it, and now you know why. It hurts too much. Rachel’s not just opening up old wounds, she’s clawing at them rabidly, and this is nothing like you imagined. You aren’t getting any joy from seeing her suffer. It was easier to think you could hate her when she wasn’t standing right in front of you, because you couldn’t see how much losing you hurt her too.

“We’re very different people. We always have been. It’s part of the –”

“Attraction?” she overlaps, almost threatening. “Yes. It’s still there, Quinn. I still feel it.”

You take a breath, trying to calm down, because she’s rattled you and you’re afraid to show it.

“It was always there, but –”

She’s still holding you too tightly and you’re desperate to put some space between the two of you; longing for the earlier banal small talk, but you know she won’t let you. Then, something in Rachel snaps, and she’s furious. The dance is forgotten, and she pulling away from you, stubbornly refusing to relinquish her grip. Her nails dig right into the back of your hand, hard.

“Stop it. Stop being so understanding! You left. You transferred schools, you moved away because of me!” 

You’ve rarely heard her voice hit this pitch before, and it’s never been directed at you.

“Because that’s what I needed to do. It was the right thing,” you implore, trying to hold her gaze.

“Who for? Stop pretending that it didn’t kill you not to talk to me, be around me or be a part of my life. Be angry with me. Hate me!” she practically screams at you, and the shock of it makes you take a step back instinctively.

There are tears in her eyes now, and she’s shaking. Everything she’s held back for all these years is tumbling out of her and she can’t get the words out fast enough. This has been a long time coming.

“I don’t hate you,” you shake your head, feeling yourself choke up, tears clouding your vision. You hate seeing her like this. You hate that you caused it even more. “Please don’t beat yourself up. That’s not what today is about.”

“So this whole visit isn’t closure for you?” she asks, her voice laced with a bitterness you’ve never heard before.

Your stomach roils and you think you might throw up, forcing yourself to try and take deeper breaths to stave it off. You don’t know what you wanted from today, but it isn’t this. You pull hard enough on her hand for her to finally get the message, and you walk away, turning your back on her, leaning against the kitchen counter, staring at the flashing digital clock on the stove.

When she speaks again, it’s with such gentleness that a tear rolls down your cheek unexpectedly.

“Please Quinn, don’t make it mean nothing when I know it didn’t.”

Jeff fades out into silence and you wish there were other songs to play to distract her and make her forget what she’s saying, but there aren’t. It’s the last on the list. The irony of it doesn’t escape you. Rachel lets out a heavy sigh, and then you hear the softer sound of her feet padding across the apartment toward you. Naturally, you steel yourself, expecting the sting of more words; barbed little truths that won’t leave you even when you’re in Paris.

They don’t come.

“I don’t regret many things, but I do regret what I did to you,” Rachel begins, reaching cautiously for your hand. Reluctantly, you turn to face her. “I broke your heart, didn’t I?”

You look at the floor, and her pretty pedicure, wondering if it’s too late to lie.

“Yes,” you reply, simply, and you look up immediately when she whimpers. Her face is streaked with tears. “It’s history now Rachel. We both made mistakes. Your heart got broken too,” you add, quietly, stroking the back of her hand with your thumb.

She moves closer. Too close. “That year living across the hall from you, it was intense, and crazy, and beautiful, and I don’t even know if I understand what it all means, but …” she tails off, sniffing back tears, readying herself for something. “It wasn’t a mistake.”

“Rachel …” you breathe, head tilted up toward the ceiling because you can’t look at her. It’s everything you’ve ever wanted her to say, and it feels nothing like you thought it would.

“I can’t let you leave this time. I just can’t!” she declares, pained, her words cutting right through you.

Before you can say anything else, Rachel’s pulls your head down; both her hands cradle your face as her lips crush hard against yours. The momentum of it pushes you back against the counter. It’s just like New York and your immediate instinct is to push her away. Except, it’s not like New York at all. The feel of her mouth on yours is different. After the initial shock wears off, you kiss her back; soft and tentative, sucking in her bottom lip and teasing it with your tongue as your hand flies up into her hair, threading deep into her curls. She moans into your mouth as a reward, pressing her body into yours; pushing up on her toes to reach you.

This time, no one will be running away.

***

 **Footnote** : The English translation of the French lyrics Quinn sings to Rachel can be found [here](http://www.jeffbuckley.com/rfuller/buckley/faq/10sine.html).


End file.
